Wolfgang Wieland

Research Interests

Space, time and causality are like a vast ordering structure for our observations. In Newtonian gravity, matter fills this structure according to the dynamical laws, but the structure itself stays rigid. General relativity unfreezed this rigidity: gravity bends spacetime, and the causal structure is itself dynamical. Quantum theory, on the other hand, has taught us that nature is intrinsically probabilistic -- the Heisenberg uncertainty principle sets a fundamental limit to how much we can now about a quantum system. The main theme of my research program is to bring these lessons together to understand the causal structure of spacetime once both quantum theory and general relativity become equally important. On a more technical level, the goal is to quantise the light cone structure of spacetime and treat the causal structure of spacetime as a quantum system itself.